Paytm to Enter into Grocery eCommerce Segment with ‘Zip’

Alibaba-backed payment platform, Paytm is set to enter the online grocery market under a new vertical that will be headquartered in Bengaluru. The company is floating a new app called Zip to connect users to both local offline as well as online grocers. A beta version of the new app is to be launched tonight.

Through affiliate Ant Finacial Services, Alibaba is infusing $575 million in Paytm, and Paytm plans to use a part of the fresh funding in its new grocery etailing. Paytm’s grocery segment with a team of 20 members is likely to begin operations soon. It will be looking at about 10,000 transactions in the grocery space in the first few months.

“We want to build the whole ecosystem. We have been working on this for the past four to five months and the beta run of our separate app, for grocery business, is underway,” said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and chief executive of One97 Communications, which runs Paytm.